The market and demand for eLearning is increasing at an enormous pace, with it the need to build eLearning content in an quick and easy way is also surfacing. We have reviewed several eLearning content creators in the past. Our subject for this review is Raptivity.  Now make no mistake, this is not a full fledged eLearning content creator but serves as an add-on to them by helping to add STUNNING interactivity in no time.

Intro

Raptivity – A Rapid Interactivity tool provides you with pre-built interactions which are based on best practices in the industry.These pre-built interactions can be called the back bone of Raptivity.  On the one hand they are capable of providing nice looking interactivities in a short span of time, and on the other hand – for the whiz amongst us – they provide a lot of customizations options. The output is in the form of a Flash (SWF) file which can be integrated with almost all eLearning tools out there. Raptivity can also help track  score and responses and can provide this information to eLearning tools for SCORM/ AICC tracking with any LMS.

Raptivity has these products to offer:

• Main Raptivity Software: ( also known as Raptivity Essential)
• Raptivity Turbo packs: Used for 3D, Games , Videos and Simulations
• Raptivity Standard Packs: which are further subdivided into Pack1, Pack 2 and Pack3
• Raptivity Booster Packs: Consists of additional 235 interactions

We wish they could mention the usage of all these packs in some easily accessible location. There seems to be some overlap between usage of various packs. A first-time visitor might feel lost on the website. Also we missed “Getting Started” Links on the homepage.

Installation

• Raptivity essential is about 200 MB in size. Installation was a breeze. It took around 3-4 minutes for end to end installation. We would have liked to find a mention of the size in front of the downloadable, so that one knows the approximate time to download.
• Raptivity provides a free trial for 14 days. The trial version allows you to create 20 interactivities from 35 interaction models.
• Once the trial is over you would need to purchase and activate the software. It took us 30 sec to activate Raptivity using online activation mode.
• If you decide to format your machine or transfer the current license to another machine, make sure that you deactivate the Raptivity software before formatting your machine.
• At the time of review it consumed about 50MB of memory when seen from the Task Manager. Not so resource heavy we can say.

Getting Started

As soon as you double click on the Raptivity icon on your desktop you will be greeted with the screen shown below. UI looks pretty slick. They have kept up with the tradition of Web2.0

To start creating your first Interactivity, click on ‘New Interactivity’. You will get ‘All Packs’ screen which will list Raptivity essentials along with any additional pack that you have installed.

Creating an Interactivity

For the purpose of this review, we will create a survey. Choose Essential Pack > Surveys > Smile Sheet. After specifying values for Size and no of survey questions, you will get this screen.

Survey questions, their font etc can be customized using the text editor on the bottom (marked with arrows).

Output

Here is an output of a quick little survey we created in under 5 mins. Needless to say it was a simple exercise and the task was well done by Raptivity.

Cost

The basic – Raptivity Essential – set up will cost you $550 during the offer period, (normally it goes for $750). If you’re interested for other packs, they have various combo offers on their sales page.

Trivia:

• Other than Raptivity Essential, the rest of the packs are about 50 – 70 MB in size.
• We tried enrolling for their Free Weekly webinar. We did get a canned reply saying we will receive another email on instructions on how to connect, but that mail never landed either in our inbox and or in spam folder. This may be a small issue, but things like this make a long-lasting impression on a prospective customer’s mind.

Parting Comments:

While I would strongly like to recommend Raptivity to focus on usability testing for their website and try to make it more user friendly, Raptivity has left me impressed me thoroughly. Other than the minor points of improvements noted above, Harbinger group has created a rock solid product. It looks like Raptivity is all set to make a level playing field for the small players in the eLearning industry where they need not worry about spending a fortune hiring designers. At a fraction of a cost and time, now they too can create impressive interactivities.

Important Links

• For a quick official overview refer Raptivity’s DataSheet.
• 6 Things you may not know about Raptivity
• Free Trial
• Buy

PS: Thank You Amitabh for the review copy.

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So I got a new personal laptop Lenovo T400, with T9400 Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 9c Li-Ion battery. I have been used to working on company provided laptops for a long time now, so never worried about the admin functions that are required with a new purchase. Installing firewalls, anti-virus, partitioning, generally our network operations guys do such stuff.

Since this laptop came with a single partition, I have to choose a partition manager so as to segregate my programs installations and files into different drives. ( If things go wrong or I have to reinstall my OS, I can simply reformat the C: drive without touching the other drive(s)).

My search started with BIG G and I hit this page soon. Since the HOME edition of EASEUS  had the smallest size and the best price in the world, I chose this edition and installed it. For sure, it lived up its expectation.

Within 2-3 mins the program EASEUS partition manager was up and running. In next 6-8 mins it allowed me to partition the C: drive into two drives. The process works something like this:

1. You take a C: drive and “Resize” it to allot some free space to it. – This step needs 2 reboots of the system. Total Time: 4 – 5 mins
2. In the next step, this free space is converted to a Partition by clicking on “Create Partition”. This step doesn’t require any re-boot. Total time : 2 – 3 mins

As soon as you click on OK, while allotting free space or while creating a partition, operations go into a pending state. You have to click on Apply button on the left bottom for them to take effect. Though you can do both the steps above by a single click of the “Apply” button but I preferred to do them one after the other. (Just wanted to be sure nothing goes wrong).

The utility worked like a charm and deserved a review here.

So EASEUS has many editions, which one should you choose?

While this comparison chart can give you a good idea, for most of the basic needs I think HOME edition would work best but yes if you are a business you may have to look into Professional or Server edition. (since EASEUS TOS won’t allow HOME edition to be used for business purposes)

Download EASEUS partition manager

PS: I am not an affiliate for this product and above is my personal experience with this utility.

A firewall is essential when it comes to preventing malicious software and hackers from gaining access to your computer. With Windows 7, you can actually fine-tune your firewall settings to match your daily usage while still keep your computer well protected. To access the advanced settings and help you get started right away, follow these next few steps.

First of all, you need to disable your Windows firewall to gain access to recommended settings. To do this, go to Control Panel> System and Security > Windows Firewall and then click on the “Change notification settings” link on the left panel. Disable both private and public network firewall and click apply to continue. At the Windows Firewall control panel page you see after clicking OK, you will notice a new button labeled “Use recommended settings” — this is what we are after — so go ahead and click the button.

A popup will ask for your confirmation, and you can safely click Yes to continue. Windows will analyze your current computer state, along with installed applications, and determine the right firewall settings for your computer. After the process is completed, you can continue with fine-tuning the firewall settings to suit your needs.

To access the advanced settings for Windows 7’s firewall, click “Advanced Settings” on the left panel of the Windows Firewall control panel page. You will see a new page with Inbound Rules, Outbound Rules, Connection Security Rules, and Monitoring links on the left panel. You can disable available rules or create new ones — for Inbound and Outbound Rules, this is essentially important and allows you to set the firewall to work according to your needs — and manage monitoring preferences from here.

Accessing your WordPress-powered admin panel from your mobile phones may seem impossible — or at least hard to do — a couple of years ago, but with the help of native WordPress for iPhone apps managing and maintaining your site on-the-go will be as easy as it can possibly get.

IPhone users now enjoy the luxury of being able to maintain their blog on-the-go with the help of Wordpress for iPhone. The latest version (2.1) allows you to create posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iPhone or iPod touch.

The user interface of Wordpress for iPhone is extremely intuitive, allowing you to access features with a few simple touches. Uploading photos, even photo-blogging extensively, will not be a problem at all because the app integrates nicely to iPhone’s camera and multimedia features.

Categories and tags as well as old posts and media will be accessible as well; they are streamed to you as soon as you configure your app. Since the Wordpress for iPhone works for both self-hosted Wordpress platform as well as free Wordpress.com blogs, so you will have no problem at all configuring the app to work with your site. It supports SSL-encrypted connection for streaming data, so you wouldn’t have to worry about security issues at all.

The Wordpress for iPhone 2.1 is now available on iTunes. You can also install the app on your iPod Touch, so get your copy right away.

Finding a free utility to unlock pdf documents is just a matter of single search on Google. On the other hand, Google does not throw up impressive results if you search for something like how to password protect a pdf file. Most of the results points you to the paid utilities.

Here is a software and step by step instructions you can use to password protect your pdf document for free:

The utility is  Pdf creator from PrimoPDF

1. Once you download the PDF creator and install it. It will appear in the print dropdown. (File > Print). Click OK to convert any document to PDF.
2. You will see the screen shown below. Click on Security button.
3. On the next window, enter the ‘Password to Open’ which will allow you to password protect your pdf . You can also enter ‘Password to Change Security’. This option allows you to change security settings that:
   1. Allow users to print my PDF
   2. Allow users to copy text and graphics from my PDF
   3. Allow users to add comments
   4. Allow users to change my PDF, including editing text and adding or removing pages

   

4. Click on OK in the screen shown above. Click OK again on the last screen.
5. Your free password protected PDF is ready. Enjoy!

Also see the cool utilities from A-PDF. This company has come up with various solutions to perform operations on PDF files. Some of them are  Batch unsecure PDF files, Put page numbers on bottom of PDF, Insert date time stamp to a Acrobat PDF, Split PDFs at pages matching specific text pattern. Check them out.

Related:

• How to edit a PDF File for free?
• How to password protect Excel and Word documents?

What is a virtual agent?

A virtual agent sometimes called a virtual smart agent, or an intelligent agent, is a script which is programmed to be able to perform a wide variety of tasks such as providing information regarding the services on offer, or respond to user query, or as in a large number of cases, provide sales services.

One major advantage of using such scripts is that they eliminate the need for a human representative to be available for customers’ needs. These scripts are completely automated and therefore, once installed successfully, they work independently of any kind of human involvement towards running the script or moderating it. This also helps service providers by the way of reducing costs that could have been otherwise incurred on hiring individuals to perform the same task.

There are various vendors of such scripts with the effectiveness and features provided by such scripts varying widely across vendors. Almost all of the scripts available have features such as having custom agent for your site, log un-answered queries on your website among many others.

Which virtual agent service we prefer?

Virtual Sales Assistant (VSA). The VSA, along with providing all features like its competitors, also provides some additional features which are unique to it.

The VSA allows you to train the virtual agent to handle various types of queries. Once the training is completed, you can analyze the performance of your virtual agent by making use of the in-depth statistical data provided by VSA. Incorporating HTML in chat windows is also an option provided by the VSA. This helps in providing better support in the form of links or web addresses of related information.

VSA also has the ability to integrate videos into your chat script which can help in understanding the concept of the sales agent. It also allows you to customize the script and insert and/or edit the default names provided by the script. VSA is superior to most of its competitors in the sense that it allows for an unlimited installation of the script, which translates to the fact that once the script has been bought, you can integrate it to any number of your websites. This essentially helps you in case you sell more than one product or are involved in marketing the same product through different websites.

VSA provides all these features and facilities along with a lifetime money back guarantee at a minimal one time price of $97. The price also includes a variety of “How to” videos and source files of the script. At its price, VSA offers the best value for money among its competition.

Check out Virtual Sales Assistant

Related article: How to integrate chat box within a website?

Last week we discussed and reviewed Learning Management Systems. Today we will review some of the best eLearning softwares present in the market.

The first question that comes to mind is – what is the difference between an LMS and an eLearning software? Well, an LMS is used to host training content and track results while an eLearning software is used to create the training content, such as presentations, quizzes, which can then be hosted in an LMS.

For our review we have picked three most popular eLearning softwares. Articulate Rapid ELearning solution, Adobe Captivate and Lectora.

Articulate Rapid ELearning Solution:

Articulate is one of the favorite tools for providing e-learning solutions. It enables you to create high quality e-learning products quickly and easily. The Articulate Rapid e-learning  solution makes use of Microsoft Power point for all of its functions. Once installed successfully, it adds an extra option labeled ‘Articulate’ on the same. What sets the e-learning solution apart from many other of its competition is the ease of use. Once you are done with creating a presentation, you can use the ‘Articulate’ option on your power point software and add animations that you want and make a Flash file.

Any learning software also needs the ability to handle questions. ‘Articulate’ does just that. It has a range of built in question handling options with various question types. If these aren’t enough, you could always use the ‘Quizmaker‘ software which is a separate software and develop your questionnaires in a better way. It has the ability to publish SCORM and AICC compliant courses and the ability to incorporate graphics and media.

Articulate Studio Standard edition is priced at $999 while Professional edition ‘09 is priced at $1,398.

Adobe Captivate:

Adobe Captivate is part of the Adobe e-learning suite and it allows users to create elearning courses without any programming or multimedia knowledge. Adobe captivate has a wide range of features such as Text-to-speech functionality, ability to produce the output files in a wide range of file formats that includes AVI, which can be used for web streaming and publishing on youtube.

An exciting feature of Adobe Captivate is the ability to let users customize the widgets. Widgets can be created using software such as Adobe Flash and then customized to meet the requirements of the particular course. Existing Power Point slides can also be involved in the projects you create using Adobe Captivate. Presentations can be imported and synced with the captivate files by using the options provided.

The software also has built in templates to make it easy to provide good instructional material without having to incorporate a lot of changes. Adobe Captivate is priced at $249 and does not include other Adobe software such as Flash, which need to be bought separately.

Lectora:

Lectora is again one of the most popular eLearning tools which is developed by the Trivantis Corporation. It can be used to create elearning courses and presentations. Lectora also has the ability to import files from the Microsoft Powerpoint format and incorporate the content to produce elearning content in various output formats raning from a HTML web page, video files and even an executable file.

Lectora supports industry standards such as SCORM, AICC etc which allow for the development of open architecture guidelines for interoperable learning content.

Among the various features of Lectora include the ability to import questions, use multimedia content to produce stand out elearning courses. Lectora supports a large number of automated tools such as title wizards, table of contents, media library, resource manager etc. These tools can be used out of the box and thus provide a great value for money. The basic version of the software is priced at $495 . Add on features can be obtained for a nominal price.

Check out Articulate Rapid eLearning suite, Adobe Captivate and Lectora.

What is a LMS?

A Learning Management System (LMS) is a software to help deliver, track and manage training and/or education. The LMSs are typically web based and offer a wide range to services that can be used to administering content and learning.

LMSs are the preferred choice of many corporate training departments that provide classroom training to their employees/students. The LMSs can be used to automate records and maintain detailed databases of employee/students registration, learning content and also allows sharing content and other resources. Some LMSs also provide a type of ‘performance management systems’ whereby employees/students can be appraised for their skills on various measures.

The LMS software are generally developed on various platforms like Java, .Net, PHP etc for the front end with a suitable database for the backend.

eLeap vs Moodle:

eLeaP LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM is one such learning software which provides features such as web-based training and e-learning solutions with a simple and intuitive user interface that caters to the needs of technical and non-technical training managers alike. eLeap can be used to provide on demand content which can be delivered online without the need for investing in expensive hardware. 

eLeap LMS provides a rich multimedia environment by making use of feature rich technologies like AJAX and RTA [Rich Text Applications]. These features used on the eLeap LMS allows administrators and instructors to easily insert existing content or create new content by a few clicks using the WYSIWYG environment.

Instructors can use the LMS to upload video, audio files, presentations and even set up time sensitive assignments so that the students can be monitored for their efficiency and learning. The process of inviting the student to the assigned task is automated and thus there is no room for any kind of human error. All these features are provided by eLeap at a cost of $125 per month and can change significantly for greater number of users.

Moodle.org is a free, open source Learning Management System which has emerged as an efficient alternative to the other LMS software. It has an open source license that makes it completely legal to even modify Moodle to suit your needs. The development of Moodle is modular and therefore you can always add new features, remove features based on your needs. The open source aspect of Moodle helps in the fact that a large number of programming enthusiasts contribute towards the development of moodle and as result, you are not limited to a particular fixed kind of software evolution.

Plugins for various needs of providing content for learning in an organization are widely available on the moodle website. Third part plugins can also be installed which epitomizes the benefits of using Moodle for the LMS tasks.

Moodle has emerged as a very viable alternative to the paid software and thus is best suited for small businesses.

Check out eLeap LMS and Moodle LMS